As the Future Unfolds

San Antonio artist debuts Hemisfair-inspired mural in Southtown

By Kathleen Petty

Photo By Sara Ellis

When Kelly O’Connor was growing up in San Antonio in the late 1980s and early ’90s, Hemisfair was kind of a bore. The artist says she remembers visiting downtown and seeing little to enjoy at the former World’s Fair site besides a wooden play structure. “It was basically a ghost town,” she says. It wasn’t until O’Connor studied art at the University of Texas at Austin years later that she realized the depth of history that existed at HemisFair. Now, just more than a month before the first phase of the new Hemisfair park opens to the public, O’Connor is honoring the site’s past with a large scale mural installed, Monday, Aug. 31, at 1010 S. Flores St. Called “As the Future Unfolds,” the piece depicts one of the less-than-idyllic moments to take place during the 1968 World’s Fair juxtaposed with the theme park-like atmosphere that had been cultivated. “In a way, it’s a memorial to the HemisFair that was,” says O’Connor, whose work will be celebrated during a Sept. 9 unveiling. “I think it’s important, especially for new generations, to realize this was a place that existed.”

This is a large-scale piece, but it didn’t start out that way. Tell us about the process.

I created a piece of artwork—much smaller than what’s out there—and then scanned it at a very high resolution and had it blown up. I’ve appropriated an image and it’s also sort of a collage. This is my first time to do something this big. It’s been exciting and it’s been a challenge. It was a challenge trying to work within this dimension—doing a very landscaped piece. Often times, my work is so laborious—all of these little shapes are cut with an X-Acto knife. It’s really exciting to see it blown up so the viewer can get into the environment and see what’s going on. You can see sort of the gaps and imperfections. I’m fine with that and I like that because then you can see it’s not some computer-generated image. The original is very textual.

Why did you decide to use this image from the monorail crash at HemisFair ’68?

I thought this image was really interesting because typically these places—amusement parks and Worlds Fairs—are very idealistic. Somebody captured this critical moment. It was this horrific incident where two monorails crashed into one another. There was a casualty and several were injured. This incident broke through this utopic façade that a lot of these idealistic environments have. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition of this horrific accident and this idealized landscape. I was asked by Guillermo Nicolas (who owns the building on South Flores) to do a piece back in April. We’re just a few miles from Hemisfair so to appropriate an image from the HemsiFair ’68 I felt was very fitting.

What’s your hope for the new Hemisfair?

I’m very hopeful that the city’s development is going to bring new life to the park and that it’s a place I can visit with my son often. That’s the most important thing, that it’s a place the community can actually use and not just a graveyard for historic houses—not that those shouldn’t be preserved, but it needs to be something the community can use.

See the piece at 1010 S. Flores St., and view some of O’Connor’s other work in Recycled, Repurposed, Reborn, on display at the McNay Art Museum through Sept. 6.